


Dum Spiro Spero(while I breathe, I hope)

by Riley_Ludicrous



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Exploration into the imperfect universe of soulmates, Lazy Medical Terminology, Light Angst, M/M, Pay attention to the lungs!, Soulmate Science, and it's not Mingyu's mother, and the breathing, but one of them does die, i guess, not as bad as it sounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-25 19:46:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17127593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riley_Ludicrous/pseuds/Riley_Ludicrous
Summary: When you meet your soulmate, you- you know immediately that it's them, and you fall deeply in love with them, and you can't be apart from them, Mingyu assumes.





	Dum Spiro Spero(while I breathe, I hope)

Mingyu’s soulmate died when he was 10 years old, Christmas Day of 2007. He found out not because he felt his heart break, or because the world desaturated, or because all instruments and voices lost their music. Christmas dinner didn’t taste like sand paper going down his throat, and there were no hellish nightmares awaiting him in his sleep. There was just an accented voice in his head, quietly warning him it was there, telling him not to get any adults’ attention because this was normal, that he had read about it in a book from the small hospital library and that they were soulmates. 

It, he, informed him his name was Minghao. Minghao had died from some long, hard-to-pronounce disease that had to do with his lungs. Minghao told him that he felt better now than he had in ages, almost like he could properly breathe for the first time in years. Mingyu tried to hold his breath, and he felt the sensation of someone rolling their eyes at him. Minghao did that a lot, he would find out. 

He pretty much just went with it, occasionally wondering passively if he was schizophrenic, but figuring that if he really was mentally ill, he wouldn’t worry about being so. Minghao would roll his eyes at the vague hypocrisy of this sentiment, but he never argued with it, not wanting to put Mingyu in a mental institution. 

The first day back from Winter Break shut Minghao up all day, and Mingyu wondered if the whole thing had been a fantasy made up from too much candy consumption, but then Minghao piped up that he couldn’t read the Hangul. Soulmate science apparently removed language barriers in the mindscape, but not when it came to reading and writing. That night, as Mingyu did his homework, he narrated it out loud. When he was done, he started teaching Minghao the basics, and Minghao tried to sing something in Mandarin. It worked, and Mingyu was so in awe that he could feel the sensation of Minghao blushing and telling him it was probably just due to him thinking it and not actually singing it. Mingyu resolved to study harder in his Mandarin class.

Mingyu grew older, taller, and handsomer according to his mother. Minghao scoffed at this, and Mingyu pouted, reinforced the pout, and then thought the pout, a practice that made his headmate quiet down. A few minutes later Minghao thought to him that it was because he had a specially ugly pout, which he rolled his eyes at. He could tell when Minghao was bluffing.

He watched a soulmate education video, which Minghao had scoffed at. It was gauged toward kids without dead soulmates, which was fair, Mingyu thought, and then it had a short segment in the middle about dead soulmates, mostly making them seem pitiful and heartbreaking.

People didn’t know about Minghao, but the stigma was something he started seeing everywhere once he was aware of it. Some of the kids said it was a divine punishment to the dead soulmate, so they’d have to live with the guilt of leaving the other without. They left Minghao angry and prone to lashing out, and Mingyu let him. Before an hour was up, he would mutter an apology, and Mingyu would push a wave of affection at him to let him know that they were okay. 

On the other side of the spectrum were cheesy romantic movies where the couple usually met before one of them died. Thankfully they were funny enough that they could ignore the offensive parts, and a lot of the time the offensive parts were funny enough to snigger through anyway.

They continued on like that, comfortably at ease together. Mingyu never tried dating, even when he got confessed to by pretty girls and cute boys. He had friends that were hopelessly in love and thought he’d be better off the same, and he smiled softly at them and told them he didn’t need to be in a relationship right now, or ever. 

They went to university, Mingyu a pre-med student, and graduated with honors. They kept on going through the long process of med school and residency. They went to Haicheng, Liaoning, Anshan and found a small children’s hospital, and they worked with kids with long, hard-to-pronounce diseases that had to do with their lungs.

And they breathed, and they hoped.


End file.
